1) What will George W. Bush’s legacy be?

That’s kind of starting at the end, isn’t it? Start somewhere else, maybe somewhere closer to the beginning.

2) Okay. Sorry. Is George W. Bush smart?

By any conventional standards, yes. He’s not a genius like Winston Churchill was or Theodore Roosevelt was, but he’s every bit as bright as the two guys he defeated in his presidential campaigns. The rub on the Bush intellect is that he’s rigid and unsubtle. The latter isn’t much of a problem because the main threat that confronts us, the fact that millions of Islamists want to destroy us, isn’t a subtle one even if it has eluded the attention of the American left. Rigidity also isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a war-time leader. But that rigidity clearly becomes a liability if it causes the president to think that he’s already made his decision so he doesn’t have to consider facts on the ground that have changed.

3) Do you think that’s what’s happened?

It could be. After 9/11, the obvious clear and present danger was Al Qaeda. Five years down the road, Al Qaeda remains a threat but a vastly degraded one. The more dire threat is an enflamed Muslim world with prominent elements that want to destroy us. I have grave doubts whether the president and his team understand this. That’s why I was so disappointed to see Rumsfeld go. While the politicians (of both parties) and the media obsess over Iraq the way a 13 year old girl obsesses over the dreamy boy in homeroom, Rumsfeld knew that Iraq was but one front in an enormous struggle. If the president doesn’t understand this and thinks that we can have a lasting peace with countries like Iran and Syria, then he’s tragically mistaken.

4) Don’t you think all this Baker Commission stuff and the apparent outsourcing of foreign policy to exiled warhorses makes the president look very small?

Since the midterms, the president has looked downright Lilliputian. But events can be strange in that way. Sometimes a president can make a comeback literally overnight.

5) In this case, it’s impossible. Too much damage has been done.

It’s happened before. In the aftermath of the 1994 midterms, Bill Clinton felt compelled to have a press conference where he insisted that he was still relevant. It’s hard to remember how disastrous those midterms were for the Democrat party. At the time, the Democrats had held the house for over 40 years. The Kos Kidz have been taking umbrage over the fact that the media hasn’t covered the 2006 midterms in the same exhaustive way that they did the 1994 ones. They’re young, so maybe they don’t know – no one thought the Republicans were going to take the House that day. What’s more, four decades of tradition were tossed out the window.

I remember being at Romney headquarters on Election Night. Mitt had lost, but we all knew that was going to happen. But some of us crowded around the TV’s in the room and couldn’t believe our eyes – the unthinkable was occurring.

6) So how did Clinton come back?

Two words, long since forgotten in most quarters – Oklahoma City. On the day of that attack, the rootless and feckless president finally looked like a leader. His rage matched the nation’s. For the first time in his administration, he looked like a president rather than some playboy policy wonk who wanted to give his wife 16% of the American economy to play with while he occupied himself using the armed forces as a Petri dish for social experimentation.

That was in the spring of '95. Oklahoma City gave extremism a bad name – about the worst thing you could call someone back then was an extremist. Passionate politics of the type practiced by Newt Gingrich fell out of favor. The public started to develop a taste for mushy moderation, and Clinton played along limiting his grand endeavors to things like school uniforms and eliminating the scourge of drive-thru deliveries (which he constantly, annoyingly referred to as drive-by deliveries.)

When Gingrich and the congress shut down the government in the summer, they looked extreme. Clinton was back on top, a position he would never yield throughout his tenure.

7) That’s kind of a depressing analysis – Bush will need a calamity along the lines of Oklahoma City to re-emerge as a leader?

I know, it is. And believe me, I’m not hoping for it.

8) What else can he do besides wait for a terrorist tragedy?

He can be the master of events. If there’s going to be an armed confrontation with Iran, it might as well be now before they gain nuclear weaponry. Same goes for Syria. Since we obviously can’t live with Moqtada al-Sadr, we should make plans to live without him.

9) You mean kill him?

Well, that is what one tries to do to an enemy in a war. Since al-Sadr is an enemy and this is a war, I think it’s fairly obvious what we should do as far as he’s concerned.

10) When did it all start to go wrong for Bush?

Katrina.

Let’s face it – Bush has never articulated the threat that we face, or at least not in a way that America has come to understand it. But his inarticulateness wasn’t a huge problem because many Americans felt they knew what was in his heart, and that his heart was pure. They also felt like they knew what was in his spine, and it was pure steel.

Katrina changed that. While Americans were suffering, Bush was fund-raising. When he belatedly appeared on the scene, he appeared overwhelmed and weak. He complimented his in-over-his-head FEMA director. He had no clear idea what to do. The president who had always been so sure of himself seemed perplexed, embarrassingly so. The public’s perception of him changed that week. It has yet to change back.

11) Do you regret voting for him?

No. At times I’ve been inspired by his leadership, at other times very disappointed. With the Baker Commission recommendations likely to get a friendly audience in the White House, the biggest disappointments may be yet to come.

But whatever his faults, he was a helluva lot better than either of the guys he ran against. I have no question about that.

12) Can I now ask this – what will be his legacy?

Well first, let’s talk about what it won’t be. It won’t be trimming the top marginal tax rate by 4% points. It also won’t be the profligate spending Congresses that he enabled. In history’s view, those will be footnotes if they merit a mention at all. (Quick: What were Abraham Lincoln’s tax and budgetary policies?)

Bush’s legacy will focus exclusively on how he dealt with the Islamist menace. In the immediate Post 9/11 aftermath, he’ll get an A+. Since then, the record is incomplete. If his administration ended tomorrow, his legacy would be decidedly mixed. The next president would have to clean up the mess in the Middle East that continues to spread. He would also have to call the American people to arms and sacrifice, two things Bush has conspicuously eschewed the last five years.

In history's eyes, Bush wouldn’t be a Neville Chamberlain who got everything wrong, but he also wouldn’t be a Ronald Reagan or Winston Churchill who got everything right. It would be his successor that history would treat as the truly consequential figure.

If Bush goes wobbly and listens to the Baker Commission, he makes it that much more likely that his successor will come from the Neville Chamberlain School. But if Bush renews (initiates?) the fight against Radical Islam, finally calls it what it is while calling the American people to action, he could still go down as a great man.

13) Are you optimistic?

Frankly, I’m horrified by the damage that the Baker Commission may do. That’s why I’m writing today – so hopefully the president knows that he will not be alone if he launches an initiative to do what needs to be done.

14) You didn’t answer the question. Are you optimistic?

No. But as anyone who followed my election predictions knows, I’ve been very wrong before. And I would be delighted to be equally wrong again.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.